TPM, Slime, Sarah and the Tea Parties

What's the difference between TPM Muckraker and Andy Sullivan when it comes to Sarah Palin? In terms of their obsession with sliming Palin - none. In terms of how they go about their attacks, about the only difference appears to be that TPM is not obsesessed with Palin's genitals.

TPM Muckraker is a left wing site that has long professed their love for Obama and hatred for the right. But they, like virtually all on the far left, hold a special place deep in their dark, dark souls for Sarah Palin - and the Tea Party movement, for that matter. Lacking any semblance of intellectual honesty, they are quite willing to go to great lengths to attack Gov. Palin and the Tea Party movement, while utterly ignoring the screaming cognitive dissonance that creates when one looks at their treatment of the home team.

First up from TPM yesterday was Man Charged With Stockpiling Weapons Was Tea Partier, Palin Fan. It is the story of an obviously mentally unbalanced man,Gregory Girard, who happened to support Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Movement - something upon which TPM focuses upon in this "guilt by association" hit piece.

But there was no indication that anyone in the Tea Party movement supported Girard, nor that Sarah Palin even knew of his existance. The same cannot be said of other murders and radicals who have associated with political figures that TPM seemed to have missed over the past two years.

There was of course the murderer and anti-America radical who quite literally launched Obama's political career in a fund raiser at his home:



Then let's not forget Obama's twenty year association with a virulent racist



And then there are the thugs Obama didn't associate with - but whom his administration did protect in their efforts to commit voter intimidation:



And what of his long association with - and his employment during the campaign of - an organization whose members have been found guilty of vote fraud in numerous states:



TPM Muckrakers hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty hardley ends there. They also ran another story the other day - "'Warning: Tea Party In Danger': Leader Slams Palin As 'Wolf In Sheep's Clothing'." They report that "Dale Roberston," a person they characteris as a "Tea Party leader," is complaining that "the movement 'is becoming nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party,' and slamming Sarah Palin as representing 'a growing insider's attack to the heart of the Tea Party.'" The problem with this report is that it has long been known that Robertson is a con artist, he holds no leadership position in any recognized Tea Party organization, and indeed, the local Tea Party organizations have explicitly disowned any association with him.

That said, if TPM wanted to report on real rifts between party leaders and a party's titular head, they certainly could have reported on the criticism of Obama coming from Senator Rockefeller the other day - essentially calling Obama's promises worthless in the video below:



But doing something like that would take a bit of intellectual honesty. TPM Muckraker is all about the spin. And the screaming cognitive dissonance.

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Standing Truth On Its Head II: Rockefeller & The Senate Intelligence Committee

The brand of disingenuous, highly partisan politics practiced by the left on every issue, irrespective of its importance to our nation, is incredibly destructive. Nowhere could that be more true than matters dealing with intelligence and national security. Senator Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released recently released a report on pre-war intelligence, in essence repeating the fiction that "Bush lied, people died." The report is highly partisan - and, in its findingns, fictional. As I have written on several occasions before (see here and here), this type of highly partisan politics portends to do untold damage to our ability as a nation to conduct foreign policy and react to intelligence.

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This today from Fred Hiatt in the editorial pages of the Washington Post:

Search the Internet for "Bush Lied" products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic "Bush Lied, People Died" bumper sticker is only the beginning.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the L-word.

"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent," he said.

. . . But dive into Rockefeller's report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

On Iraq's nuclear weapons program? The president's statements "were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates."

On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president's statements "were substantiated by intelligence information."

On chemical weapons, then? "Substantiated by intelligence information."

On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information." Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? "Generally substantiated by available intelligence." Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information."

As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you've mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the Rockefeller indictment. So, you think, the smoking gun must appear in the section on Bush's claims about Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to terrorism.

But statements regarding Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information." Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda "were substantiated by the intelligence assessments," and statements regarding Iraq's contacts with al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information." The report is left to complain about "implications" and statements that "left the impression" that those contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation.

In the report's final section, the committee takes issue with Bush's statements about Saddam Hussein's intentions and what the future might have held. But was that really a question of misrepresenting intelligence, or was it a question of judgment that politicians are expected to make?

After all, it was not Bush, but Rockefeller, who said in October 2002: "There has been some debate over how 'imminent' a threat Iraq poses. I do believe Iraq poses an imminent threat. I also believe after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. . . . To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? I do not think we can."

Rockefeller was reminded of that statement by the committee's vice chairman, Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), who with three other Republican senators filed a minority dissent that includes many other such statements from Democratic senators who had access to the intelligence reports that Bush read. The dissenters assert that they were cut out of the report's preparation, allowing for a great deal of skewing and partisanship, but that even so, "the reports essentially validate what we have been saying all along: that policymakers' statements were substantiated by the intelligence."

Why does it matter, at this late date? . . .

. . . [I]t trivializes a double dilemma that President Bill Clinton faced before Bush and that President Obama or McCain may well face after: when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security, in a democracy that will always, and rightly, be reluctant.

For the next president, it may be Iran's nuclear program, or al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan, or, more likely, some potential horror that today no one even imagines. When that time comes, there will be plenty of warnings to heed from the Iraq experience, without the need to fictionalize more.

Read the entire article. Through World War II, Republicans supported Democrats, remaining a loyal opposition. Through the vast expansion of Vietnam by JFK and LBJ, Republicans again remained a loyal opposition even as Democrats themselves turned. Now, in the most significant matters that face a country, matters of national security, Democrats are not a loyal opposition, they are a fifth column. Time will tell how much destruction this works upon this country.

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Special Interests, Obama, Pelosi and National Security

Mike McConnell, who served both the Clinton Administration and now the Bush Administration, has stated flatly that we need civilian cooperation to conduct our intelligence operations and that failure to pass the FISA reform bill will harm our ability to collect intelligence. On what possible basis than could a minority in the Senate, including Barack Obama, and the House Democratic leadership be seeking to torpedo this bill? The answer lies in one of the many special interests that hold sway over the Democrats - class action lawyers who see a gold mine in suing telecommunications companies for their cooperation with our intelligence community.

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This today from Robert Novack, explaining why Democrats are willing to degrade our national security:

A closed-door caucus of House Democrats last Wednesday took a risky political course. By 4 to 1, they instructed Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call President Bush's bluff on extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to continue eavesdropping on suspected foreign terrorists. Rather than passing the bill with a minority of the House's Democratic majority, Pelosi obeyed her caucus and left town for a week-long recess without renewing the government's eroding intelligence capability.

Pelosi could have exercised leadership prerogatives and called up the FISA bill to pass with unanimous Republican support. Instead, she refused to bring to the floor a bill approved overwhelmingly by the Senate. House Democratic opposition included left-wing members typified by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, but they were only a small faction of those opposed. The true reason for blocking the bill was Senate-passed retroactive immunity to protect from lawsuits private telecommunications firms asked to eavesdrop by the government. The nation's torts bar, vigorously pursuing such suits, has spent months lobbying hard against immunity.

The recess by House Democrats amounts to a judgment that losing the generous support of trial lawyers, the Democratic Party's most important financial base, would be more dangerous than losing the anti-terrorist issue to Republicans. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against the phone companies for giving individuals' personal information to intelligence agencies without a warrant. Mike McConnell, the nonpartisan director of national intelligence, says delay in congressional action deters cooperation in detecting terrorism.

Big money is involved. Amanda Carpenter, a Townhall.com columnist, has prepared a spreadsheet showing that 66 trial lawyers representing plaintiffs in the telecommunications suits have contributed $1.5 million to Democratic senators and causes. Of the 29 Democratic senators who voted against the FISA bill last Tuesday, 24 took money from the trial lawyers (as did two absent senators, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama). Eric A. Isaacson of San Diego, one of the telecommunications plaintiffs' lawyers, contributed to the recent unsuccessful presidential campaign of Sen. Chris Dodd, who led the Senate fight against the bill containing immunity.

The bill passed the Senate 68 to 29, with 19 Democrats voting aye. They included intelligence committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller and three senators who defeated Republican incumbents in the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress: Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jim Webb of Virginia and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

. . . Nothing will be done until the House formally returns Feb. 25, and the adjournment resolution was constructed so that Bush cannot summon Congress back into session. Last Friday morning, debating two backbench Republicans on a nearly deserted House floor, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said there was no danger in letting the FISA legislation lapse temporarily. Democrats hope that will be the reaction of voters, as Republicans attack what happened last week.

Read the entire article. For his part, Bill Kristol is urging Democrats to read Rudyard Kipling, author of such non-politically correct prose as "The White Man's Burden:"

. . . Orwell offers a highly qualified appreciation of the then (and still) politically incorrect Kipling. He insists that one must admit that Kipling is “morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting.” Still, he says, Kipling “survives while the refined people who have sniggered at him seem to wear so badly.” One reason for this is that Kipling “identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition.”

“In a gifted writer,” Orwell remarks, “this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality.” Kipling “at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like.” For, Orwell explains, “The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.” Furthermore, “where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly.”

If I may vulgarize the implications of Orwell’s argument a bit: substitute Republicans for Kipling and Democrats for the opposition, and you have a good synopsis of the current state of American politics.

Having controlled the executive branch for 28 of the last 40 years, Republicans tend to think of themselves as the governing party — with some of the arrogance and narrowness that implies, but also with a sense of real-world responsibility. Many Democrats, on the other hand, no longer even try to imagine what action and responsibility are like. They do, however, enjoy the support of many refined people who snigger at the sometimes inept and ungraceful ways of the Republicans. (And, if I may say so, the quality of thought of the Democrats’ academic and media supporters — a permanent and, as it were, pensioned opposition — seems to me to have deteriorated as Orwell would have predicted.)

The Democrats won control of Congress in November 2006, thanks in large part to President Bush’s failures in Iraq. Then they spent the next year seeking to ensure that he couldn’t turn those failures around. Democrats were “against” the war and the surge. That was the sum and substance of their policy. They refused to acknowledge changing facts on the ground, or to debate the real consequences of withdrawal and defeat. It was, they apparently thought, the Bush administration, not America, that would lose. The 2007 Congressional Democrats showed what it means to be an opposition party that takes no responsibility for the consequences of the choices involved in governing.

So it continues in 2008. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of national intelligence, the retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, and the attorney general, the former federal judge Michael Mukasey, are highly respected and nonpolitical officials with little in the way of partisanship or ideology in their backgrounds. They have all testified, under oath, that in their judgments, certain legal arrangements regarding surveillance abilities are important to our national security.

Not all Democrats have refused to listen. In the Senate, Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, took seriously the job of updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in light of technological changes and court decisions. His committee produced an impressive report, and, by a vote of 13 to 2, sent legislation to the floor that would have preserved the government’s ability to listen to foreign phone calls and read foreign e-mail that passed through switching points in the United States. The full Senate passed the legislation easily — with a majority of Democrats voting against, and Senators Obama and Clinton indicating their opposition from the campaign trail.

But the Democratic House leadership balked — particularly at the notion of protecting from lawsuits companies that had cooperated with the government in surveillance efforts after Sept. 11. Director McConnell repeatedly explained that such private-sector cooperation is critical to antiterror efforts, in surveillance and other areas, and that it requires the assurance of immunity. “Your country is at risk if we can’t get the private sector to help us, and that is atrophying all the time,” he said. But for the House Democrats, sticking it to the phone companies — and to the Bush administration — seemed to outweigh erring on the side of safety in defending the country. . . .

Read the article.

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